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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27457777">It’s a long road back from where you left me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tamloid/pseuds/Tamloid'>Tamloid</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Reflections in a Mirror [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Hobbit - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Acorn Feels (Tolkien), Angst, Between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Bilbo Baggins and the One Ring, Gold Sickness (Tolkien), Grief/Mourning, I Learned About Oak Trees, Lost Love, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:14:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,550</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27457777</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tamloid/pseuds/Tamloid</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo stood in front of the oak tree and just breathed.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Reflections in a Mirror [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2006104</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>121</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>It’s a long road back from where you left me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A one-shot in my growing Mirror-verse. This could be a standalone, but it expands on something mentioned in <a>“A Typical Dwarrow Afterlife, as told by Thorin Oakenshield.”</a></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Bilbo stood in front of the oak tree and just breathed.</p><p>
  <em> In. Out. </em>
</p><p>The sun was barely risen. Its light strained his eyes, facing east as he was. Dew clung to green Shire grass and dampened the curls on his toes. Stillness hung in the air, a fresh day awaiting whatever forces may arrive to shape it.</p><p>
  <em> In. Out. </em>
</p><p>The other residents of Hobbiton were still abed, Bilbo knew. It was much too early for even the most dedicated of workers to be up and about. No first breakfast would be served for at least an hour yet.</p><p>The time didn’t matter much to him. He had been awake and standing in front of this tree while the stars were still visible overhead.</p><p>Frodo had gone back to Buckland a few days ago. He was living in Brandy Hall now, had been since his parents had died. The child had only came to visit for a few days in Hobbiton with his odd older cousin with whom he shared a birthday.</p><p>Bilbo never slept well after Frodo left. He suspected that drifting off in his armchair in front of the fire only to wake an hour later with a sob caught in his throat and the taste of blood on his tongue could hardly be called sleep. So he didn’t sleep at all, really.</p><p>Bag End always felt more alive with Frodo nearby. Even when he wasn’t physically present at a particular moment the very air in the smial seemed to hold onto the memory of the boy's laughter until he returned. It was when Bilbo knew that Frodo wouldn’t be back for a while that the silence crept in and stayed. That the dreaming returned.</p><p>
  <em> In. Out. In. Out. </em>
</p><p>The oak tree was growing well, Bilbo thought. It would soon be twenty years since he had planted it, and twenty-two since Bilbo had returned from his journey east. The tree was now nearly twelve meters tall. He rather thought that it would reach at least thirteen meters at its full height. Life seemed to be cruel that way. Thirteen meters of solid, sturdy oak to remember the thirteen companions who had so radically changed his life.</p><p><em> Plant your trees, </em> the wind whispered through the oak leaves. <em> Watch them grow. </em></p><p><em> In. </em> Shudder. <em> Out. </em> </p><p>He was trying. He was following the last plea of his greatest friend. He had come back, hadn’t he? That entire first year back he had clutched the acorn like a lifeline, holding it so tightly that the ridges of its cap dug indents into his skin. But he had eventually planted it near his home. He watched it grow from a sapling into the towering tree before him. Some might have called the tree mighty or stalwart or majestic sitting at the top of the hill, but Bilbo had seen all those things before and the oak didn’t compare.</p><p>Majesty was a single solitary peak rising from the mists amid desolation and ruin. Stalwart was strong, calloused hands gripping an ancient shimmering sword. Might was a single call rallying both friend and reluctant ally into a hopeless battle. It was sapphire eyes that held him rooted in place as they pierced him with anger or with a gentler, fiercer, unnamed emotion. Those things had once existed in Bilbo's life but now they were...were…gone.</p><p>
  <em> In. Out. </em>
</p><p>Bilbo closed his eyes to concentrate on his breathing. Gone. <em> He </em>had been gone for twenty two years. Bilbo had once hoped as the tree grew taller that the memories, too, would grow easier to bear. Hoped that the closer the oak reached towards clear blue skies the lighter Bilbo’s soul would grow, too.</p><p>That hope hadn’t lasted very long.</p><p>Instead, Bilbo’s heart grew heavier each year even as his body remained remarkably similar to the one that had carried him halfway around the world. His soul felt more stretched the farther the branches grew from the acorn Thorin had looked at in wonderment and the farther he became from the person Thorin had known. Yet Bilbo’s body remained rooted in the past, as though it knew that he couldn’t become someone that Thorin would not have recognized.</p><p>They’d had so little time together, after all. A few months as antagonistic companions, a few precious weeks as inseparable friends, a glimpse, perhaps, of what might have turned into more. And then all of it cut down before the two of them could even figure out what possibilities there might have been.</p><p><em> It’s a poor prize to take back to the Shire, </em> the branches rustled.</p><p><em>In. Out. </em>Gasp. <em>In. Out.</em></p><p>Breathing seemed more difficult as memories grew sharper behind his closed eyelids. He could picture it so clearly in his mind, those handful of days between the dragon and the battle. His beloved friends, and one even more beloved than the rest, exultant when they learned the dragon had fallen. Rifling through the gold, so much gold, with such abandon they’d reminded Bilbo of Shire children playing in piles of fallen autumn leaves.</p><p>Sharp orders barked in a voice that should have been singing instead. Eyes grown glassy with gold sickness, shifting every which way in suspicion and paranoia. Thorin’s solemn face through gauzy mithril, claiming he wanted Bilbo to be protected no matter what may come.</p><p>And later, in a hall off to the side of the treasury. Bilbo had stolen a moment for himself away from his friend’s growing madness, trying to prepare himself to do what needed to be done. Thorin had accused him of stealing the Arkenstone, betraying him—which of course, he had. But instead of Bilbo confessing his sin he had held out his hand and opened it, a single solitary acorn resting in the center of his palm.</p><p><em> One day it’ll grow, and every time I look at it, I’ll remember. </em> </p><p>Bilbo <em> did </em> remember. He could hardly forget. More than two decades after the fact, the warmth and brilliance of Thorin’s smile, the clarity returning to his eyes, his beloved friend staring at the acorn and then at Bilbo’s face with what might, for a moment, have been love—all of it remained ingrained in Bilbo’s memory as fresh as the day it happened. He hardly needed a towering oak tree to remember that one perfect moment before the destruction that came after.</p><p>
  <em> The good, the bad and how lucky I am that I made it home. </em>
</p><p>Eyes still closed, Bilbo could almost feel the acorn’s weight in the palm of his hand…</p><p>
  <em> In. Out. </em>
</p><p>When Bilbo opened his eyes once more the picture in his mind's eye had dissipated but the weight in his hand remained. He looked down to see his right hand outstretched, palm open and upturned, his ring sitting innocently in the center.</p><p>The sight startled him so much that his whole body gave a jerk and he nearly dropped the ring in the grass. When he settled he looked around himself to see that the sun was now slightly behind him in the sky and his fellow hobbits were bustling down the lanes of the town. It seemed well past midday by the look of things. It might nearly be tea time.</p><p>Bilbo felt himself grow cold inside despite the heat that infused the air. He had just spent the entire day standing in this one spot reminiscing. He knew he had started the morning gazing at the oak tree as he always did after waking from the dreams that haunted him. He couldn’t recall when he’d taken his ring out of his pocket or when he’d transferred his gaze away from the tree. The crick in his neck told him that he had been staring down at the ring in his hand for a long time before he had realized it.</p><p>He glanced at the ring once more with a shiver of trepidation and shoved it back into his pocket. He closed his eyes again and when he opened them it was just the oak tree standing before him once more. Good. He’d be much better served staring at the tree all day than at the ring, no matter how useful it had proven in the past. He knew the treacherous call of gold all too well.</p><p>He approached the oak tree and placed his right hand flat on the trunk, holding it there until the rough feel of the bark replaced the lingering sensation of cool, slick, hard gold. Bilbo pressed his forehead into the tree beside his hand and closed his eyes.</p><p>
  <em> In. Out. I miss you...</em>
</p><p>Bilbo breathed deeply a final time, opened his eyes, and then turned decisively away.</p><p>He had a day’s worth of work to catch up on after all that time spent outside. He would send a letter to Rorimac Brandybuck tomorrow assuring him of Frodo’s good behavior during his visit and inviting the boy to come stay whenever he desired. Frodo loved climbing the tree, having picnics under its branches, chasing his friends and cousins ‘round its trunk. Perhaps, after a time, Frodo’s brightness would dispel the sorrow Bilbo felt each time he came here, the bitterness and grief of a future that had died in his arms.</p><p>Perhaps, after long enough, the oak would simply be a tree.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Sorry about the angst &lt;3</p><p>This story required research! And math! Well, maybe not required, but I feel better having done it. Fact: a live oak in healthy soil will grow 33-61 centimeters (13-24 inches) per year. That equals roughly 6-12 meters of growth after 20 years. The Shire is all about good healthy soil so the tree grew at its max rate. Live oaks can grow 12-24 meters tall at full maturity, so Bilbo’s estimate of at least 14 meters is quite tame. If it grows to maximum height he’ll...find other ways to make it refer to Thorin, I’m sure. Yay dendrology!</p><p>Also, timeline! Bilbo left for the quest in TA 2941. It’s now 22-23 years later, roughly TA 2963. It’s unclear when Frodo’s parents died, but Bilbo didn’t adopt Frodo until TA 2989. As much as I love the headcannon of middle-aged Bilbo with baby Frodo, alas, the timeline here is cannon.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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